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Dimmu Borgir – Interdimensional Summit

Ah, Dimmu Borgir. Nuclear Blast’s trusty cashcow and probably the most vapid, inconsequential and populist Norwegian metal act to somehow stumble into a career. So here we are with the second post-ICS Vortex/Mustis effort and the first sign of life from Dimmu Borgir after an 8-year hiatus from the recording studio. “Interdimensional Summit” is their latest exercise in tedium and it cements the notion that their best and brightest days are now well behind them. “Interdimensional Summit” is the scion of the worst aspects from “Abrahabadra” and “Death Cult Armageddon” and probably the lowest the Norwegians have yet sunk. It’s easily the worst this band has yet expelled from its creative colon and a new low in a canon containing treacherously few peaks to begin with.

For the lack of a better descriptor “Interdimensional Summit” sounds like a slightly more muscular Nightwish or Therion (circa “Vovin”) without the sense of grandeur. More troubling is that Dimmu Borgir still insists on chugging (or writing any substantial riffs for that matter) like it’s 1994. “Interdimensional Summit” is power metal in all but name. This is the most enthrone darkness triumphant that Dimmu Borgir has yet sounded. It makes you pine for the simpler days of the neither-here-nor-there populist groove/thrash of “Enthrone Darkness Triumphant”, the keyboard-dominant excursions into the “Spiritual Black Dimensions” or even the incoherent semi-industrial debacle known as “Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia” where Dimmu Borgir badly aped Fear Factory. Therion did what Dimmu Borgir does in 2018 far better in 1998. “Vovin” at least had the decency to be tolerable in its operatics and reliance on choirs. “Interdimensional Summit” is as aimless, purposeless, and portentously pompous as Dimmu Borgir has ever been.

Whether it’s the marching tempo, the orchestral pomp and the heavy reliance on choirs to carry the title song – this is Dimmu Borgir in all of its defective glory. “Interdimensional Summit” trudges and chugs, evidently without any apparent direction or trajectory in mind, with all the repetitive riffing and vocal effects we have come to expect from this band. It is immaculately produced, certainly. Too smooth and glossy for its own good, perhaps. Daray, the Polish import and probably the best drummer this band had the good fortune to recruit, is reduced to keeping time. Geir Bratland has officially replaced Mustis and he’s the least offensive part of the new membership. “Interdimensional Summit” more than anything else, prior or since, so perfectly encapsulates Shakespeare’s famous quote from Macbeth: “It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Dimmu Borgir could very well be mistaken for any interchangeable Finnish symfo death/power metal band at this point. It’s crass commercialism at its most vile.

If anything it’s conclusive proof that Dimmu Borgir is impervious to any kind of growth or evolution. It’s the culmination of every wrongheaded implication that “Enthrone Darkness Triumphant” hinted at. The complete dearth of any meaningful riffs, the standard rock drumming and Shagrath’s tired vocal performance herald yet another transformation for the band. The post-ICS Vortex/Mustis years will remember Dimmu Borgir as the band making their identity crisis their entire raison d'être. The band remains as polarizing as they’ve ever been and, no doubt, a good portion of their undiscerning fanbase will eat this up without question. Dimmu Borgir never was, is, or will be, black metal in any capacity it is traditionally understood. Dimmu Borgir – in case their product in the last twenty years wasn’t enough of an indication – is populist swill for the masses: low on substance, bereft of both intelligence and integrity and blatantly commercialized and commoditized as to appeal to a broad audience as possible. All the signs have been pointing at this for over a decade now. The masks have fallen from The Kings Of the Carnival Creation – and the sight, for those not in the know, is grotesque and deformed.